[Editor's Note: this is, in fact, a lie. The occasion depicted is obviously a game of very large chess, though the date and place are correct. It was a demonstration game played between two Masters of the day, Peter Romanovsky and Ilya Rabinovich. Why? - I don't know - I'm just the bloody editor - maybe because they could? Observe that the rooks/castles have artillery, which must have been a handy thing to whip around the board in a hurry. Presumably you could stop your clock while the guns were limbering up. Are the pawns expected to clean up after the knights, I wonder.]
Reluctantly, I must add a couple more photos:
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| Rabinovich |
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| Romanovsky |
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| And they did make their moves by telephone! Also megaphone, as you see. That may be Romanovsky on the right. Right background is the Alexander I monument. |
Here's a more recent bash at the same idea:
That's brilliant Tony. Love your humorous observations too!
ReplyDeleteThanks James. [Don't encourage him - he's bad enough already - Ed]
DeleteThe worst of it was, due to local outbreaks of Spanish flu, one of the players had to telegraph his orders in from lockdown in Nizhny Novgorod. So another wargaming first for the Soviets. 😉
ReplyDeleteApparently this was one of a series of exhibition games which were put on, starting in 1921, to develop more public enthusiasm for chess. I'd never thought about it, but I sort of assumed Russians had just always been a nation of chess players. I think you'd struggle to get a big crowd out to watch outdoor chess in the UK. Unless it was Celebrity Chess, of course.
DeleteTerrific picture, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure, young sir.
DeleteInteresting.
ReplyDeleteI see from the last picture that an opportunity was missed at the live reenactment of wateroo on the bicentennial. It could have been staged as a wargame with live soldiers. Perhaps with a computer handling the combat resolution rather than umpires running about with dice towers.
Hi Ross - good point. I wonder how they would work around the Lion Mound? Let's see your cuirassiers get up there, then?
DeleteFrom the top picture it looks like Black is leading with a co-ordinated Cavalry attack on both flanks, having got some skirmishers quite far forward and in amongst the enemy line.. White looks a bit un-co-ordinated, really. I wonder how it turned out?
ReplyDeleteI was trying to work out how many moves they'd had by the first picture. I reckon that black has just captured white's Queen's Pawn on the 4th move, and I also reckon that the white pawn at white's QB4 must be in the process of walking off the board, having been taken. I couldn't find any record of a result.
DeleteProof that Russians truly are pawns in The Great Game.
ReplyDeleteIndeed so! The black pieces were played by the Russian Army, the white by the Russian Navy, which means that in the white knights we have a couple of examples of that rarity, a mounted sailor. Horse Marines, anyone?
Delete👏👏👏👏👏 Jonathan
DeleteI’ve actually stood in the square outside the General Headquarters in St Petersburg/Leningrad ... and could have taken my PW game with me had I realised! I’m sure that my Russian guide - who was a professor of English at the St Petersburg University - would have been gobsmacked if I had shown him these photographs when I did,
ReplyDeleteAll the best,
Bob
Great stuff here, Tony!
ReplyDelete